Regular time consumption on average:

56 hours of sleep (ideally) – 33%

40 hours of work (ideally) – 23%

15 hours of friend time – 9%

3 hours of family time – 2 %

55 hours of free time – 33%

Planned use of free time:

Yoga/Exercise

Painting/Drawing

Reading

Cooking

Halo

Finding new music

Going to live music shows

Gchatting/Skyping with non-local friends

Writing!

Things to reduce/eliminate from free time:

Facebook

Watching episodes of TV on Netflix

Complaining

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Good-Evil-Prelude-Philosophy/dp/0679724656

One day you find something surprising.  When somebody insults you, you can agree with it–and accept it.  Or you can think about it, consider it, and reject it–but, you don’t have to counter attack.  You can accept you are something of that insult.  Even more beautiful, is you can decide to keep it, or use it to motivate you to change.  It is your choice.

distant to suddenly needy.

Undulating between want and disgust

Between good principles and undeviating lust.

I can’t maintain a solid relationship with these feelings

But choosing what is safe and right has never been an option

Proceed at will, but do so with extreme caution.

It’s not that I am so upset with the risk,

with the rebound, withdraw, craving, or depression

but more that I simply can’t actualize the connection.

I know the paths, what’s best, what’s the debt and cost

Exploring the options to relieve lends my heart to exhaust

I don’t belong, I can’t take away the pictures I saw

Playing my songs over their record, and I’ve never met her

The anxiety, the defeat, trying to sit in a taken seat.

I can’t find simplicity in this, trying to find a means to resist

there is no peace in rest, I’ve fallen victim to it

Nobody is going to save you now,

Nobody is going to make you use what you found

The answers are still unused and lying around

It’s already been done, it’s already, “point-of-no-return”

the inevitable truth, that it’s all going to burn

So let your stomach churn, with hell and self loathing

when have you ever been accustomed to atoning

It’s really only a parade of immorality from dragging of time

the masquerade of friends’ two cents and not seeing the signs

Noting boring consequence, they don’t see the beauty of passion

only the greys of norms, but somewhere there’s a median of satisfaction.

I hope…

As mentioned in previous posts, I am involved with a married man.  In researching this online, there is very little positive to find other than “the sex is amazing”, which is true.  There is a lot you sign on for, that doesn’t cash out until much later—it isn’t evident in the short term, and I have fell victim to those types of behaviors before (smoking comes to mind).

My ongoing justification for the romance and sexual nature of the relationship is the compatibility.  We even made a list of 50 things, purportedly objective, of things we would want in another person and we meet a high percentage of those things—but from my reading, it misses the point.

The statistics say that 95% of all married people will meet somebody more compatible than who they married.  Of those 95%, most said they found several people more compatible than who they married, and one or two far more compatible than the person they married.  That makes sense—but this also tells me people who remarry will at some point again find somebody more compatible than the person they married.  Clearly choosing the person you will spend the rest of your life is the most important decision one will ever make.  Also, there has to be a line drawn on what qualifies as “compatible enough” to a place where when all of the quirks and faults of your mate are accentuated with time, the factors of compatibility will outweigh the scales positively and keep the integrity of the unit you have built. I digress.

Had I made my list before being involved in an extra-marital affair, I most certainly would have listed “not-married” as a deal breaker.  I am a woman of worth, and do not deserve to be put second to another woman—only children, if applicable—yet, here I am.  Temporarily (?) we have made the choice to be just friends.  To most that would seem like the right decision, but what everybody else thinks is best is not always best, so I think a thorough analysis is due.

What will take place if we revert to being romantic and sexual? On the positive end, we would get the immediate satisfaction in indulging our desires—but what beyond that?  Hmm, is there anything beyond that?

On the negative end, I will have to deal with the slow subconscious degrading of my self-worth, knowing that I am being put second in this man’s life.  I will have the anxiety of not only being caught, but being judged by my family and friends.  I will risk being looked upon poorly at my place of work if we are caught.  I will risk his wife finding out, his wife telling his kids when they are old enough to understand, slandering my name, and making overall life with him much more difficult.  It was easy for me to say that I could deal with that in light of the compatibility and chemistry, but we all know that over time that the negatives are amplified, that the chemistry dies out, and at some point we meet somebody we have greater compatibility with.  How would all those negatives sit over time?

More likely than not, some negative things that would arise over time would also be: the weight of the guilt in feeling like I was continually putting fuel in the fire of their breaking up.  Why would I intentionally choose to carry that, when I clearly do not have to do that?  Additionally, knowing that he and I did not have the self-control to stop ourselves, how could we ever have confidence in each other to remain faithful when that person with greater compatibility likely did enter our lives?  I wouldn’t want him to doubt me, and I sure as hell would not want to doubt him.

“Relationships born out of affairs survive less than 5 percent of the time.”  That isn’t a very good statistic.  However, 67% of second marriages end in divorce; that is nearly a 30% delta.  I am improving my chances of success by nearly a third.  Lastly, being friends, and eventually having my head cleared by abstaining from romance and intense sexual chemistry, and lightly dating others will give me much needed perspective to deeply evaluate and analyze if this is as good of a match as I think it is at this point in time.  Being that it is the most important decision in my life, do I really want to initiate evaluating it in a cloud of confusion generated by guilt, sex, romance, anxiety, and depression?

So after writing three large paragraphs of negatives, and the only real positive being that “immediate satisfaction in indulging our desires”, how could I do anything other than just be friends?  It would be irresponsible.  I have kept very few fortunes from fortune cookies in my life, but I do remember one, “Do as you wish as long as you hurt no one”.  I really believe that, and in participating in an extra-marital affair, I am directly risking and disobeying that mantra.  I can’t accept that for the woman I aspire to be.

I’ve never seen the drug deter the addict

Unraveling string after string of logic,

Entangled it’s hard to gesture myself as honest.

Modest, hardly that’s hard to claim

I feel like this is a beast I just can’t tame

Shamed and unsuitable, gripping and irrefutable

Like two magnets clawing at the grit beneath their feet

Being pulled towards this black hole of inevitable defeat

How can we be discreet about an emotional ticking time bomb?

Pretending we can have some control over how the war is won

Maybe I’m missing the whole point of this chapter

Maybe I’m too focused on what’s coming after

Open up this box and see what’s inside to analyze

And use what I choose to take it one day at a time.

and as much as I think Dr Phil sucks he’s probably right

http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/41

Most people, including my friends and family, are confused with my choices.  They assess/value me as a person, and wonder how I could demand so little.  Really though, there has never been a time where I did not do exactly as I wanted.  One thing that is absolutely certain, is that my friends and family have come to know that I can take care of myself.  I have a good perspective on everything, and I take a lot from every situation.  I don’t have the same morals, boundaries, perceptions, judgements, and approach to life that everybody else does–but I have exceptional confidence and pride in the way I live my life.  I am not free from mistakes, but I have pride in the way that I evolve after them.  I really couldn’t ask for more: hands on trial and error–and a hell of a lot of good stories to tell from it.

In the end no matter what has happened to me: disease, getting fired, having no money, having my heart broken, having my ass chewed out, living for months in pain… it was survivable in the end.  And I’m grateful for being alive another day for the pursuit of happiness and wisdom.  I take in a deep breath and think: suffering is beautiful, life is beautiful, and I will always feel this alive.  I never stutter, I never withhold, I never abstain, and I never hold back without the pain and impetus of personal experience behind me.  I think that’s pretty incredible.

So now I am in a “classic Cat” situation again as my closest friends would call it.  The man I love is married to another woman…for now.  “Classic Cat” in the sense that it is seemingly undesirable, exciting, and I am stubbornly, and without reserve, participating it in. Again the expected reaction of how I could stand for this? how could I do this to myself? am I a masochist? No, not at all.  Weighing on the scales in my head I feel the positives far outweigh the negatives…for now.  In the negatives, I have time restrictions on when I can see him.  I am still able to see him, he thinks the world of me and treats me great.  By proxy of participating in the situation, there is no added negativity, no harm–only the longing–the desire to see him more and be more legitimately a part of his life.  But for now I am in a holding period.  So in my mind, when I am without him, these feelings are the same as if I were with no one.  I need to feel those feelings regardless.  I have been a serial monogamist since I was 17.  So in a way, I am having my cake and eating it too.  I am feeling the withdraw of removing myself from a world where I have constant companionship, and I am also able to be with the person who I believe I will be with for the rest of my life.  Of course I want more, because I see how amazing it is, but it is a test and a blessing, and also a rigorous, philosophical [and probably the only way I would allow a] test of my patience.

Of course, the scales always win though, and what is negative in my mind is somewhat out of my control at times. We are puppets to our emotions.  If I do start to see the negatives in the way everybody else sees, then the scales will come to the tipping point. If the tipping point does come, I would hope that I would never settle for less compatibility, for less of a man than he is.  I would be devastated if this waiting was in vain, but undoubtedly I would take a great deal from the situation–and I would know it was all done in the pursuit of happiness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u15rHU8w1HU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKii8s4G-5g

My recently ex-boyfriend called me the other night and said he had an “epiphany”–I suppose I did rub off on him just a bit.

He said he was having a conversation with a friend at work, and realized that his life had been centered around “complacency”.  He said directly that he saw this as a self-created problem that allowed him to accept the fact that he did well enough at work, that he made enough money to live easy, and although he was unhappy with his job, he accepted it as a fact of his complacent personality.  In light of our break-up, I can only assume that he was also inferring his complacency as a problem in our relationship.  It’s true–there were problems that he allowed because it didn’t pass his threshold of annoyance to stand up for himself and make a change.  I think that is the characteristic of a complacent person perhaps–a high tolerance for dissatisfaction, either in others or within yourself.

In reflection of his words, I realized that I have the opposite problem, but only when it comes to myself.  I am exceptionally hard on myself.  I think I also am hard on others, but I don’t like others to feel bad so I typically find a way to take personal responsibility or control for dissatisfaction with a situation.  I remember going to see “Black Swan” with my ex-boyfriend and sitting there after it ended, staring at the screen and saying, “I identify with those emotions so much; I understand that perfectionist neurosis.”

And I suppose it is really the same thing: total disallowance of dissatisfaction within yourself.  It is interesting, because my ex is certainly driven to succeed and does so.  Thus, it isn’t always a necessary state to be dissatisfied to achieve.  In fact, being a perfectionist can be a very destructive thing.  I have this instinct to change things, even when they may be good enough.  The characteristic of something that lays lightly and quietly as a mild dissatisfaction to some, for me it slowly burrows into me like a hot coal or acid eating away at me.  I feel so unsettled that if I do not change something I may go crazy.

Certainly it isn’t good to be extremely complacent or extremely perfectionistic.  Certain characteristics of each are beneficial circumstantially.  I identify with that element of myself so strongly, I realize, especially within philosophy.  It is the characteristic that I call “the seeker”.  Constantly questioning, constantly looking for answers to evolve, to transcend, and to improve.  In fact my life has been so incredibly driven by that, that I don’t think I could be with somebody who did not live that, or at least identify with that strongly.  To a certain extent, we are our neuroses.  And if nothing, finding somebody who lives them or understands them is probably one of the most critical drivers of compatibility–as I have always said, “we are all crazy, it’s all about finding connections with people who are your type of crazy.”

I see myself as currently transitioning from young adulthood(marked by finalizing sense of self, an aptitude to and pursuit of a career specialization, and experimentation) to adulthood(marked by an established career, stable finances, and the ability/intent to position oneself to build a family).  As a personal goal, I hope to rid myself of my three dysfunctional relationships: alcohol, sex, and love.

Alcohol & Sex: I think this is only natural for young adults, as experimentation is its cornerstone.  However, if it is truly my intent and desire to become an adult, I must make a concerted and conscious effort to foster a healthy relationship with both alcohol and sex.  I have a plan in place to rectify my dysfunctional relationship with both, and I don’t doubt my ability to see that plan to its end.

Love: And herein lies the far more complicated problem.  Most of my relationships with men have certainly been dysfunctional.  However, it is due to my deeper dysfunctional relationship with love that these other relationships are even allowed to exist.  For too long I have allowed love to take the lead above all else, including self interest–allowing it to jeopardize my career, my family, and finances.  The process of why I love has matured incredibly, but my blind disregard of all else has maintained.   Most recently, in the most valid reason I have had for loving, personality compatibility, I still proved to myself that I blindly disregarded all other important factors in making myself so vulnerable as to fall in love and give that love fully and honestly.  I continue to refuse to think about what I really need. Thus, I am still giving my love under destructive circumstances.

In light of all of these, I am removing myself from all three.  Alcohol and sex is easy, and if anything they are comfortable to be away from.  However, being without that dysfunctional relationship with love, even for a few hours, feels like I am going through a withdraw of heroine.  I ask myself, how could I do this, and now seemingly so much farther and deeper than ever before when I know critical needs of mine are not being met. So despite the pain, I have to endure it–because if I do not do this now for myself, then I never will.